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Obama Statue to Leave Indonesia Park

JAKARTA, Indonesia — A recently erected statue of President Obama as a 10-year-old boy will be removed from a public park here, city officials said Friday, bowing to vociferous criticism on Facebook just a month before Mr. Obama is scheduled to visit Indonesia.

The statue will be relocated as soon as possible to an elementary school that Mr. Obama attended during the four years he spent here, the governor of Jakarta, Fauzi Bowo, told reporters.

In December, the city unveiled the 43-inch-tall bronze statue in a park in Menteng, the neighborhood where Mr. Obama lived with his divorced mother and Indonesian stepfather in the late 1960s. Financed by $10,000 from Mr. Obama’s supporters here, it depicts the boy known at the time as Barry in shorts and a T-shirt, smiling as a butterfly lands on his left thumb.

But the statue of Mr. Obama — who successfully exploited the potential of social networking sites during the 2008 presidential campaign — soon became the target of intense ire of critics who said that Mr. Obama had done nothing for Indonesia and that the park should be reserved to honor an Indonesian.

More than 56,000 Facebook members joined an Indonesian-language Facebook group called Take Down the Barack Obama Statue in Menteng Park. Critics also filed a lawsuit to force the city to remove the statue.

Photo

Indonesian students looking at the statue of President Barack Obama as a 10-year-old boy at Menteng Park in Jakarta on Friday.Credit
Tatan Syuflana/Associated Press

Mr. Obama remains extraordinarily popular in Indonesia, where government officials, the news media and Indonesians expressed disappointment that he did not include the country in a trip through Asia last year.

“I don’t hate Obama, either,” he said, adding that his protest was for “our image as Indonesians.”

“We Indonesians don’t even pay enough respect to our own heroes, people who contribute to our country,” he said. “Then, suddenly, you build a statue of a person who’s contributed nothing to Indonesia. It’s only because he lived here when he was little.”

At the statue’s unveiling in early December, a city official said it would inspire “Indonesian children to reach their dreams.”

Muktita Suhartono contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on February 6, 2010, on Page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Indonesian Officials to Find New Home for a Statue of Obama as a Boy. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe